Hall of Fame Profile: Marissa Jarratt

Marissa Jarratt joined 7-Eleven in 2019 when the convenience retailer was going through a major transformation. With her extensive background in food and beverage marketing, she was a natural fit to join 7-Eleven’s ranks since its stores were striving to be more focused in those areas. On top of that, she had grown up in Dallas, where the chain is headquartered, and knew the storied history and heritage of the brand. 

7-Eleven was also focused on digital transformation, both in terms of its store operations as well as the customer experience. Jarratt recalls that the retailer was looking for a marketer who could tell the story of its offerings and the changes that were happening. And, she says, “do so in a way that could bring the brand back to the forefront for a new generation.” That was two and a half years ago.

Jarratt, who assumed the role of chief marketing officer, has done that and so much more. She has been named a 2022 inductee into the Path to Purchase Institute Hall of Fame. 

The Early Years

Born in Houston, Jarratt spent her early childhood in Corpus Christi, Texas, then moved to Dallas when she was 10. Her father worked in the oil and gas industry, and her mother was a high school teacher who transitioned to the corporate world after the family’s move. She says her curiosity and intellectual passions were stoked early, as well as a strong work ethic instilled by her parents, and she learned how hard work would earn good grades and, ultimately, business results. 

A graduate of the University of Texas at Austin, she majored in both finance and Spanish to make good on a promise she had made to her dad: earn one degree that would provide job security and another to follow a passion. The latter was a part of her from very early on, learning the language and culture from her Hispanic paternal grandmother. 

Jarratt looks back on her first jobs as a waitress as some of the hardest she’s ever had, but they came with lessons that have served her well throughout her career. Namely, the importance of customer service and bringing a smile to someone’s face when you exceed their expectations, she says. 

Career Development

Internships at art organizations — including the Austin Lyric Opera as well as the Mexic-Arte Museum — followed, feeding her personal passion for culture, art and music, before she landed her first job out of college as a financial analyst at Nortel Networks. 

From a corporate finance job to moonlighting with friends who were starting a web design company at the turn of the millennium and embarking on a new-found passion of creating a business plan and leading business development, Jarratt found herself at UT-Austin once again, this time to earn her MBA in marketing. “It was there that I really fell in love with consumer behavior and brand management,” she says. 

She combined her financial and business acumen with her new marketing knowledge and knew this was her career path as soon as she was part of an innovation project during an internship for Frito-Lay in 2003.

Jarratt joined the company full-time that same year in brand management and spent the next 14 years in various capacities. She says her time included work in a variety of different areas of marketing, including brand management, innovation marketing, shopper marketing and portfolio strategy. Notable achievements include her work on the Cheetos brand in 2007, as she and her team transformed that business.

“It had been in decline and we repositioned it to target adults,” Jarratt says. “That unleashed a full decade worth of growth that probably continues to this day at PepsiCo.” 

The team earned an Ogilvy award and sent the business on a different path. It was in her time there that she learned to take risks and be open to learning new aspects of the business while at the same time growing as a leader. Still today, Jarratt encourages others to take risks and try new roles, because you never know what doors might open as a result. 

She also learned how to give constructive feedback to people in a way that can motivate and inspire them (known as the “velvet hammer” approach), as well as the value of diversity and inclusion, and how important it is to bring that to the forefront as a leader. “To model it from a behavior perspective as well as to build teams that are diverse and inclusive,” Jarratt says. “We need to have both working together.”

During her time at Dean Foods that started in 2017, she was charged with leading the marketing function and building a stronger brand focus for the company. Jarratt took her first step into general management when she was asked to also lead the R&D organization. 

By early 2019, she was the senior vice president of marketing and general manager of the frozen business unit. Her experiences in this role — in conjunction with the boards on which she served on behalf of Dean Foods, like MilkPEP and Good Karma Foods — made her a better overall leader, she believes.

Impact at 7-Eleven

Jarratt had about 100 days under her belt at 7-Eleven when COVID-19 hit. February 2020 saw a restructuring of the marketing team under her guidance in preparation for the strategic transformation that she would lead. “Our focus shifted from pursuing an ambitious strategic agenda to actually balancing that with the critical needs of the business,” she says, noting that the early months of the pandemic were spent “triaging a lot of business needs” and supporting its stores and franchisees to keep them in business.

The team forged ahead and developed a new brand purpose called “Activate Awesome,” which became a galvanizing force for the organization. “It provided some oxygen in the system at a time when everyone was very stressed out and tired from the grind of COVID, and it became a rallying cry,” she says. It was a notable accomplishment, Jarratt notes, given the environment everyone was operating in at the time and, since then, they haven’t looked back.

Jarratt and her team — composed of Marissa Eddings, senior director, digital & content marketing; Mario Mijares, head of voice of the customer; Stephanie Shaw, senior director, corporate communications; Paige Jones, senior director, brand strategy, advertising & media; and Missy Lukens, senior director, in-store marketing — have continued to build momentum off of the initial brand purpose work. Recently, that work has culminated in the launch of the “Take it to Eleven” campaign in 2021, which reintroduced consumers and customers alike to the 7-Eleven brand. “It was the first time in five years that we advertised on TV, we significantly increased our media investment versus prior years, and it marked the beginning of a new era of modern marketing at 7-Eleven,” Jarratt adds.

Over the last 18 months, Jarratt has led efforts to establish and rapidly grow the retailer’s customer insights and analytics function. She now has a best-in-class insights and analytics function in place, with a full suite of marketing measurement capabilities. 

Into the Future

The team also launched a proprietary customer panel called the “Brainfreeze Collective” that is 80,000 members strong and allows the company to research and analyze how it can better serve customers. The insights and analytics team has also started to accelerate personalization capabilities by leveraging the scale and scope of their loyalty programs, and is on the cusp of launching its first retail media network. “The growth and momentum we have in that part of the business is really exciting, and I think it will set the pace for the next couple of years,” she says.

But what Jarratt is perhaps most proud of is how she and her colleagues have grown as a team. “We’ve done it in a way that is high integrity and that has built a really exciting culture,” she says, noting that more than 50 people have onboarded in the last 18 months. “We’ve made a lot of changes while we’re executing these big, ambitious programs and we’ve done it in a way that has built great culture, excitement and momentum on the team.”

Under Jarratt’s leadership, the team will continue to advance its data integration and monetization capabilities, focusing on maturing its marketing capabilities across digital, tech and data, which she sees as a way to provide the best customer experience, both in stores as well as on its 7Now delivery platform and with loyalty programs, 7Rewards or Speedy Rewards. 

“Data and digital is becoming the ante,” she says. “Companies that learn how to leverage data and tell a compelling brand story that drives emotional resonance will be best positioned to attract and retain loyal customers.”